I know we have talked a little about this in at the LARP, but I would like to formally put it down here in the forums to see what others think.
There are certain weapons that are just on the verge of being twohanders, but are not quite the full length. I know Thads sword, as well as my own has a large enough handle for two handed wielding, but is small enough to be wielded in one. Pehaps there should be another category of weapons where these would fall under.
If wielded one handed they do the 5 base of a medium, but when wieled two handed they do 7 base. Now the reason for the 7 instead of the 10 is because they are still not large enough to be considered a two handed weapon, so should not do the same damage, but they are much larger then a normal one hander so should have some advantage over them.
Now I know what some are going to say, "why add more complication to the game", but I don't think it would be too hard to implement and wouldn't cause too much grief. I have seen many getting full two handed damage from weapon's not to full two hander specs which I feel is more of a problem then adding a fourth weapon category. After all since the damage was seriously increased for two handers they should be of the right size.
What do you all think?
yeah what he said lol....
I think that making you pay for armed combat 3 to give you the ability to deal more damage is a fair trade. It also helps you out if you are a sword and board guy like Scott said. I think the big issue most people will say is that it is hard to keep up with the odd numbers coming up, but we all know that it isnt a very exact science when you are hacking away at each other.....
Its not so bad having the odd number as the alchemists and the wizards are able to cast hone 2/3 now as encounter abilities, so making a hand and a half weapon strike 9/10 instead of 7/8 makes the mental counting quite a bit easier, as I'm almost always going to round 9s up, 7s and 8s... I'm going to try to count as face because they're just too weird to round properly in combat. 8s I'd probably round to 10s, 7s, probably still going to be counting 5s to be honest, and add an extra blow periodically.
It makes sense, assuming you require Armed Combat - Rank 3 as a prereq for it. I would agree that my sword (max length -0.5") would also fall into that category of being long enough, but just short of a two-hander. In fact, I almost think that the max length of the longsword in orn is probably a little too long, and it should be parred down a little bit to allow for the hand and a half length.
I know what you mean in regards to the 2h damage without having a sword long enough. There is one in Dragon's Den that is really just too heavy to comfortably wield as a 1h sword but isn't much longer than my own weapon. The only difference between the two is mine weighs a whole lot less based on construction materials.
I also wouldn't mind the option of being able to drop a ruined shield and switch stances to high guard for the extra damage on a longer 1h sword.